Calling Internet Superman, Please Help Us! I NEED INTERNET!

And again the same happens… Over one month since my last post… I can assure you that if I could post once a week I would as trust me, I have plenty of crazy stories thrown at me… But its hard to post when the only thing you have is a mobile network that loads Facebook home page in no less than 6 minutes, and an internet stick that has a life of its own. One day ill be informed I have used 100% of my quota and it wont work, 2 days later ive used 80% of my quota, and later that day the internet works super fast. One hour later it just stops loading pages… It makes me soooo frustrated I want to throw the internet stick out the window, but I would just end up going downstairs and sticking it in my computer again and praying to the internet Gods that it works…

So this internet crap has been a long frustrating story… I have been spoiled in these civilized countries (not referring to Egypt right now!). I’ve always had perfectly working internet. The few times something has happened to the internet at home, it’s because someone cleaned and by mistake pressed the off button on the router… When we have changed supplier of internet, it has taken only a few days and the company follows up to make sure you have perfect internet… Basically the company cares about their customers… Yeah sounds crazy right! Now why on earth would you care about your customers, I mean they came to YOU looking for internet!

We started the internet story by going to Etisalat (an internet supplier here in Egypt) and telling them we would like internet. They told us you need the contract of your phone line and a electricity bill with your name…. Okey… That means we have to change the name of the apartment at a government office. Here in Egypt dealing with the government is like dealing with a small 5-year-old screaming child that wants candy and has ADHD and is tearing the house down, terrorising the neighbours and his siblings…. Its IMPOSSIBLE and you avoid it at all costs.. (im not saying ignore your child, im saying ignore the government!) You try to find loop holes in order to not have to deal with them… Anyways we found out we had to change the name to get internet. So my husband called one of the local Egyptian supermen. The changing-apartment-name-in-government-building superman. He said that it should be done in a week. In this process you need to go to a dirty, noisy building and you have to ask the previous owner of the apartment to come and sign the papers that you are now the official owner. So imagine you sell your apartment, would you be interested in wasting your time helping the new owners change the name of this apartment?! Okey maybe your civilized enough to realise you should help them… But this guy wasnt… He wasnt interested… Anyways superman fixed it and 24 thousand stamps later and 3 months the name was changed. (Egypt loves stamps… stamp anything to show its legit, and then stamp the previous stamp to tell people who the stamp is legit and then sign, and then stamp the signature to show the signature is real…. etc, until you can’t stamp no more, or the ink runs out!) Now I hear you say why 3 months, well I don’t actually know how long it took all I know is that we started when we bought the apartment at the end of last year and got the papers right before summer… Anyways people in Egypt wasting my time makes me angry so lets not talk about how long this freaking stupid paper took and focus on the positive… We could move to the next step… We found out we didn’t have a phone line..

So we contacted the local phone company. There is only one and you HAVE to have your phone line with them, so you can just imagine how AMAZING their service is… I think their motto is: You come to us for a phone line and we show you we don’t give a rats ass…. Goodbye! So yeah my husband was in and out of that office for several weeks… Call this guy and he will install it, call this one and he will fix it, this guys phone is off, come back tomorrow… Take this number, come back next week… BLA BLA BLA until he exploded and finally got a name and number. We chose a number for the phone line and they came and installed it… Now we are ready for the internet…

RING RING….

Stupid guy: Excuse me sir, but the home phone number you have has not been paid…

My husband: WHAT, I got this number yesterday from the office, its new…

Stupid guy: No sir… You have not paid your previous bill of more than 1500 LE and you need to pay it as soon as possible or we will cut your phone line…

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA and one more freaking HAHAHA! Only in Egypt can you freaking get a NEW phone line with an old bill attached to it and be forced to pay it, even if it’s not yours!?!? I don’t know whether to cry or laugh at this situation… So we went back to the phone line company and changed the home phone number to one without a previous un-paid bill! The phone company called us several times asking us to pay this stupid bill, claiming it was our responsibility to pay it… I swear im not making this shit up!

So we got the new line installed and a new number.. Now off to Etisalat again to tell them we want internet… No problem, a week and it should work… They were supposed to come install it and give us the router before the Eid holiday, but didn’t… So we called them after Eid and we spent a few days waiting for them to call us back with a suitable date and time, but as you know people in Egypt NEVER EVER call back… After more than a month from signing the contract with Etisalat and a lot of angry phone calls they came to ‘install’ the internet… I say ‘install’ because this is what the guy did:

– Walked into the apartment with his super dirty shoes on, completely messed up the WHITE floor!

– Stank up the whole living room with a smell of 2-weeks old sweat, old garlic and onions and fungus (whatever that smells like, but it was absolutely GROSS)… The stank stayed in the apartment for several hours, and we sprayed perfume like mad!

– And opened the box with the router in and put it on the table…

Honestly, no joke, I think I could have managed to open the box with the router and put it on the table, all this without leaving dirt all over the floor and a stench that made us want to throw up!

So we waited a month for this?! Anyways lets not get angry now… it was a beautiful month without internet…. who needs internet, NOOOO I don’t… Its fine… A month is only 31 days… No problem… BREATHE!!! NO don’t breathe, the guy left a stinking apartment!

So then we had the phone line, router and we were ready to surf the internet… Where is the internet??? Ummm no internet… SOOOOO another freaking call to Etisalat… Where is our internet?!?! It will work at the beginning of next week… Okey, so now the waiting game starts… We went to Johannesburg for a few days and came back on a friday (officially known as the END of the week!!!) And there was no internet…. Another call to the stupid company…

Unplug the router, turn it on and off, check the phone line, turn your computer off and on, connect the router to your computer…. I’m not your freaking SLAVE… Do this, DO THAT… HOW ABOUT YOU JUST FIX THE FREAKING INTERNET… More than a month since we signed the contract and we still have NOTHING but a router and a stupid guy on the phone telling us to pull and push things, like a miracle will make the internet work! We need an Egyptian internet superman, if he exists!

Nothing worked so there was obviously a problem with the internet and not the router or wires…He said he will send the problem to a technician who will have a look at it within 2 days, BUT now its weekend, so make that 4 beautiful, amazing days without internet…

Yesterday we got a message from Etisalat… ‘The problem with your internet is technical. Please visit the following website and type this password.’

I SHIT YOU NOT!!!! I AM COMPLETELY SERIOUS!!! Ah okey, thank you Etisalat for fixing my problem with my internet. Ill just GO ONLINE AND TYPE THE FREAKING WEBSITE, RIGHT AND IT WILL ALL BE FIXED!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!??!

I DONT HAVE FREAKING INTERNET YOU DUMB SHITS!!!

Breathe… breathe…. I’m so angry I don’t know where to put my frustration, if I go on the balcony and scream, ill just be admitted to a mental hospital… But these freaking Egyptians are making me mentally insane!!!

So we found out that there is something wrong with our phone line aswell, so that might be the reason for no internet. We called the guy who installed the line and told him it’s not working, he said ‘ah that’s a common problem… let me pass by and try to fix it’… Wait what? Common problem, you obviously need to start working somewhere you actually can do your job PROPERLY! I don’t want shitty excuses as: this is a common problem… It might be a common problem, but don’t make it my freaking problem!!! FIX IT!!!!!! Call me tomorrow at 10 and ill pass by the apartment…

Today we called him at 10… I’ll give you one guess to tell me the problem?

HIS PHONE WAS OFF!!!!

HIS PHONE WAS OFF AND WE AGREED TO TALK AT 10!!! HE HAD TURNED HIS FREAKING PHONE OFF!!!!!

One question: WHY?

I’m done… I don’t want internet anymore… I don’t want anything… I don’t need internet… I don’t need anything…As long as I have a little food and some water, I don’t want anything from anyone in this country anymore…. keep your uneducated selves to yourself…

But trust me if I ever get internet in this apartment in my lifetime, im going to use the crap out of it…. I’m going to download so much my computer over-heats and shuts down and my hard drive explodes, the Etisalat servers freeze and the whole company goes bankrupt, ONLY BECAUSE OF MY INTERNET USAGE!

On a happier note, here are a few pics from my honeymoon…